September 5, 2011 • 26 mins
Dogs have been used in war for a long time and are still used today. In this episode, Sarah and Deblina look at five war dogs known for their strength, loyalty and intelligence. Tune in to learn more about war dogs from World War I through Vietnam.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chocolate Bardies, and today
Debilina and I are going to be talking about dogs,
but specifically war dogs. Yes, I mean dogs are one
(00:24):
of my favorite topics. Anyway, I am a your dog. Yes,
I'm the owner of an adorable wheat and terrier named Juley,
and I talked about him, probably way too much, but
that's not what inspired this podcast. Um. Actually, the news did, right, Sarah. Yeah,
war dogs have been in the news quite a bit lately,
as I'm sure many of you have realized. After Osama
(00:46):
bin Laden was killed and it was revealed that a
war dog, more appropriately a military working dog was present, Um,
it got people's attention. People wanted to know about these
militarily inclined dogs. It It's been on our minds really
for longer than that, because we have quite a bit
of Animal Planet content that we work on here at
(01:06):
how stuffworks dot com, and um, war dogs come up
from time to time, and those articles. Yeah, actually, one
that we're going to mention today came up last year
when we were editing some bully breed content, so that
will be something that you can read about later too, exactly.
And we even have an article on war dogs too,
which will throw to you at the end. But our
very own editor, Alison louder Milk, recommended it to her
(01:27):
to us and it was sort of the final push
to get us going on this topic. But we have
talked about dogs before, or rather Katie and Candice have
more like historical pooches of famous people, and Katie and
I have talked about war horses of history, so Napoleon's Marango,
Roberty Lee's traveler, Babiaka who is Il Sid's horse. But
(01:50):
in case you haven't listened to that episode, we really
didn't get much beyond the Civil War because horses, of course,
even though they were used for thousands of years in
battle all around the world, eventually became obsolete military technology.
That is not the case with dogs. No war dogs
and Sah mentioned they're now more properly called military working
(02:12):
dogs were used probably as far back as when humans
domesticated the gray wolf, and they're still used today. Since
there's still no better means of detecting an i e. D.
Than a dog's nose yea, even the most complex technology
can't compete. And there are a few qualities and you're
gonna see these pop up in the different dogs, the
different individual dogs we talk about. But a few qualities
(02:33):
that make dogs useful for warfare throughout history. One, their
strength and loyalty makes them really good fighters. Also, their
endurance makes them good messengers, and their intelligence and eagerness
to please make them trainable. Yeah, and then there's their
size too, and that's something which of course varies a
lot between breeds, and it makes them either really big
(02:55):
and intimidating and strong or tiny and able to go
where pep bull can't very easily go. So, starting sort
of in the early days with ancient warfare, ancient Persians, Syrians, Babylonians,
and Greeks all are known to have used dogs in war,
usually as shock troops. They'd have a line of mastiffs,
which if I was fighting and a lot of mastiffs
(03:19):
came charging at me, I would definitely stop and give
pause for a minute. It's probably massives that you think
of too, if you're considering ancient warfare. Ancient dogs in warfare. Yeah,
they're Egyptian monuments to that effect as far back as
three thousand BC that show massiff like dogs. These are
actually imported Masstiffs after seeing them fight with British soldiers
(03:39):
in fifty five BC, and he used them for things
like bull baiting, lion fighting, things like that, even fighting gladiator.
But if you're thinking about war dogs today or even
of the past century, you're probably not thinking of mastiffs.
You're probably thinking of two breeds in particular that are
now almost synonymous with military working dogs. These were both
developed around the turn of the twentieth century in Germany
(04:01):
and they've been used heavily in most of the centuries
major wars. And those are German Shepherds, which were bred
by Captain Max von Stephanits to be trainable, loyal, and intelligent.
The American Kennel Club describes them as or their characters
as incorruptible. Makes me imagine Elliott nests German shepherds or something.
The other one of those major breeds as the Doberman pincher,
(04:23):
which they were bred around the same time as we
mentioned in Germany, to have high endurance, speed and smarts.
And there are a few other large intelligent breeds that
pop up from time to time, the Belgian sheep dog
farm colleagues, giant Schnauzers, and a few notable MutS too
that we're going to mention. Uh, the U. S Military
now uses a lot of pure bred labs because they
(04:46):
are really good at sniffing things out and they have
that easy, friendly, calm demeanor. Well calm is probably not
the best word for labs, but easy going nice. But
we're not just going to talk about big dogs, because
little dogs certainly have their place in war history too, because,
as we said earlier, little dogs can go places where
(05:07):
people can't. Right. In World War One, little terriers were
actually used as cigarette dogs to distribute free tobacco to
troops and the trenches, and terrier breeds like Jack Russell's
would also patrol the trenches for rats, so they were
perfect for that because of their size and their prey drive,
their inclination too for those things well, and a little
less likely to get shell shocked than kitties. Kitties and
(05:29):
trenches doesn't sound like a good combination. So our first
dog we're going to talk about was actually a rater,
and we don't know that much about her except that
she did her job really, really well. And this dog
is now nicknamed Hatch. We don't know what her real
name was. World discuss the origins of that nickname in
a little bit. But she was a two year old
(05:49):
who lived aboard the tutor warship the mary Rose, which
we've talked about before on our shipwreck episode. The mary Rose,
as probably a lot of you remembers, thank in battle
July nineteen and most of the men on board went
down with the ship, as did little Hatch. However, the
(06:10):
mary Rose Trust recovered hatches skeleton and eventually reassembled it
and now is in the process of analyzing the skeleton
or the skeleton is being analyzed by experts to try
to figure out what kind of breed it is. Yeah,
And according to Rear Admiral John Lippiatt of the mary
Rose Trust, quote analysis of Hatch's bones suggests that she
(06:32):
spent most of her life within the confines of the ship.
It is likely that the longest walk she took were
along the keyside at Port Smith. So not a very
exciting life for poor little Hatch. But since she was
found wedged in the sliding door of the carpenter's cabin,
that's the nickname. Yeah, that's the nickname. Some have suggested
that she was the carpenter's pet or maybe a ship mascot,
(06:53):
so at least maybe she had an okay life on ship,
but evidence of only partial rats skeletons aboard the wreck
suggests that pet or not Hatch, was a rat or
a Sarah mentioned, and a pretty good one if you're
surprised that they had a dog as a rat, as
I kind of was. Cats apparently were considered bad luck
in Tutor times to have aboard your ship, although since
(07:16):
the mary Rose think anyway, I don't know if it
really would have helped or hurt much more. But now
we're gonna go ahead, fast forward, way past Tutor times
into the twentieth century, and that's where the rest of
our dogs lives are going to take place in their story. Yeah,
so we've talked about dogs used in ancient warfare and
a dog on the mary Rose, But when you fast
(07:38):
forward to the twineth century, as Sarah said, they're pretty
much it's pretty much not done dogs in warfare, at
least in the US. Even though state side kennel clubs
had lobbied for dogs in combat, there was no formal
war dog program during World War One, for example, but
there were still some mascot dogs here and there in
the trenches with US troops, and America's first Canaan war hero,
(08:00):
a bull terrier mix named Stubby, was one of them.
So Stubby got involved in the war effort during the
spring of nineteen seventeen, kind of by accident. He just
wandered onto the grounds of Yale where a training camp
for the hundred and second Infantry, twenty six Yankee Division
was taking place, and he seemed to be a few
weeks old, definitely astray, and he proved to be a
(08:22):
hit with the soldiers. They let him stay and supposedly
the dog was became one of them pretty quickly too.
He would drill with them, he learned to salute, and
Private J. Robert Conroy became Stubbies primary caretaker and they
named him Stubby because of his cropped tail, so a
little affectionate ribbing there with the dog. So when it
(08:43):
was time for the one second Infantry to ship out
to Europe, they smuggled Stubby aboard the s S Minnesota
by pulling him through a porthole with a rope. So
they went to Great Links to take their friend along
with them, and after they landed in France, Stubby stayed
with his unit, went to winter training with them, and
then joined the troops and the trenches. He participated in
seventeen engagements altogether in four World War One offensives, and
(09:07):
he never seemed to want to flee even with all
that shelling going on around him constantly. So there are
several stories about Stubby's war adventures, including how he got
gassed once and this made him more sensitive to the
smell of gas and better able to detect gas attacks,
so he would be able to detect them and then
sort of warn his fellow soldiers about it. But perhaps
(09:29):
the most famous story about him is one that involves
the capture of a German spy. Yeah, and there are
a few different versions slightly different versions of that story.
According to one, Stubby was sleeping in a trench one
night when he suddenly awoke and ran off into this
small patch of brush, and his caretaker, Conroy, heard a
(09:49):
voice cry out soon after and went to check and
see what was going on with it. He found Stubby
with his teeth sunk into the rear end of a
German spy who had been bi the making a map
of the Allied trenches. So the soldiers disarmed the spy. Stubby, however,
wasn't so willing to let go and finally had to
be Coke's pride, off of off of the guy. Yeah,
(10:12):
and you can see pictures of Stubby online if you
look him up, and he's not a very large dog.
So it's kind of funny to imagine this little dog
hanging off the back of someone's but basically it looked
like a dog who could who could bite in and
hold on them he does. Yeah, I mean that Animal
Planet content that we mentioned at the beginning of the
episode that we edited last year, and it was a
(10:33):
batch of content about bully breeds and that's where Stubby
came up in in our research with that. And one
thing that people kind of associate with bully breeds is
that they have a really strong bite. So then his blood. Yeah,
so I think you're probably right about that. But Stubby
received many honors for his heroics after the armistice. He
met President Woodrow Wilson when the President visited his regiment
(10:54):
in France on Christmas Day nineteen eighteen, and he returned
with his unit to the States in nineteen nineteen Stubby did.
That is, in nineteen one, General John J. Pershing awarded
him a gold medal, and later Stubby was designated an
honorary sergeant, So that's usually how you see his name
put out there. Meanwhile, though, back in the state, Stubby
was participating in veterans parades and went to American Legion conventions.
(11:17):
In nineteen nineteen twenty three, he became the official mascot
of Georgetown University because his still master Conroy, was attending
law school there. And by nineteen six Stubby died, but
he was not forgotten. He was stuffed, although that's not
exactly the best way of putting it. Instead, a plaster
(11:38):
cast was made of his body and his skin was
mounted over that cast, and his cremated remains were interred
within the cast. Kind of complicated, and for a while
he was on display at the National Red Cross Museum,
and then in nineteen fifty six, Conroy presented him to
the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and today he's
(11:59):
on display the National Guard Armory in Hartford, Connecticut, so
you can still go check out what Stubby looked like.
So Stubby made it into World War One sort of
by chance he had to hitch a ride, essentially. But
just because the US didn't officially use dogs in World
War One combat didn't mean that other countries didn't use
dogs a lot. So the Germans deployed approximately thirty thousand
(12:21):
dogs during the war, the French and the British another
twenty thousand dogs. And we're going to talk about a
few of those dogs, a few French dogs in our
next entry. Yeah, And French dogs are interesting because they
had a lot of different roles in war. They'd work
as sentries, ratters, and cigarette dogs. Some were Red Cross
casualty dogs or mercy dogs who would bring medical supplies
(12:43):
to troops injured on the field. PROUSTC, a French Red
Cross dog, for example, supposedly saved the lives of more
than a hundred men in a single day, dragging some
of them back to the trenches. But in World War One,
one of the most important responsibilities of war dogs was
actually message delivery. They could be trained to deliver messages
either one way, or to carry messages back and forth
(13:05):
with two handlers in different units. You normally think of
messengers in World War One as carrier pigeons, but Unlike
carrier pigeons, dogs obviously couldn't avoid the gas clouds by
just flying over them, so these messenger dogs were sometimes
outfitted with gas masks to protect them while they were
carrying these important notes between camps. But one of the
(13:28):
most famous messenger dogs from World War One was an
all black English Greyhound working Collie cross named Satan. And
Satan turns out to be a really good dog, so
terrible name. I guess she just got that name because
she might have been a little scary looking. But during
the Battle of Verdun, Satan's French handler and a small
(13:48):
garrison that was with him were cut off from the
rest of their troops and were under terribly heavy fire
behind enemy lines. They had run out of their pigeons
and they had nothing left to pass along the specifics
and their situation, like the coordinates of the German forces
that were selling them that needed to be silenced in
order to relieve the garrison. So it really seemed like
(14:11):
a hopeless situation. They were just going to get shelled
until they were all gone. Yeah. Finally, though, the men
saw a black dot racing towards them across the field,
and it turned out to be Satan in a gas
mask delivering a message from the French. But when he
was almost to safety, Satan was hit in the leg
by a German sniper and he laid down on the ground. Supposedly,
(14:34):
according to the Harper's Magazine article that the story was
originally told in, when Satan's handler saw the dog shot,
he got to the top of the trench to call
him himself, to try to urge him on, to try
to get him to keep going. A handler was shot dead,
but not until after Satan heard his voice and did
in fact get up and started on three legs, yeah,
(14:56):
and he arrived finally. His neck tube contained a message
that said, for God's sake, hold on, will send troops
to relieve you tomorrow. But more importantly than that message,
he had a basket with two it's always described as
two very frightened pigeons. I'm sure they were frightened, and
the French used these pigeons dashed off two identical messages
(15:21):
that had the coordinates of the Germans and sent the
birds off. One pigeon was killed, but the other safely
delivered the coordinates and thus saved the garrison. So it
was a joint effort of that pigeon and Satan but
managed to to help him out. So that was World
War One. But by the time World War Two rolled around,
the Army finally agreed that it needed to involve canines
(15:44):
and its efforts, so they started what was called the
Canine Core, and the first official canines were enlisted by
their owners. Owners actually donated more than forty dogs to
this cause, which is pretty amazing to think of just
signing your dog up to to go off to war,
but you don't know if he's going to come back
or not. I mean, in an environment where you're probably
sending your kids off to it wouldn't have been so strange. Exactly.
(16:08):
One of those dogs that was donated to the war
effort was Chips, a German Shepherd mix who was born
and basically just living a dog's life in Pleasantville, New
York when he was appropriate right whose owners enlisted him
in the Canine Core. But from Pleasantville, Chips went into
training and got sent to Morocco, and later he was
part of the security force that protected Roosevelt when Roosevelt
(16:32):
met with Churchill at Casablanca. But Chips probably best known
for the work he did in July nine with General
George Patton's seventh Army as they came ashore in Sicily.
So the morning of July tenth, Chips and his handler
were pushing inland into Sicily from the beach and they
approached this hut, or at least that's what it looked like,
(16:54):
that was up on a hillside. Suddenly, though, the hut
erupted with machine gun fire. It is really a disguised pillbox.
All the human soldiers at this point hit the ground,
but Chips broke free and he stormed the hut from
the rear. Moments later, several Italian soldiers spilled out, with
Chips kind of going at them. He was supposedly tearing
(17:14):
at the arms and the throat of one of them,
and chips handler called him off, but the American side
took the prisoners, but Chips didn't come through this unharmed himself.
He had a small scalp wound and powder burns on
his coat, to which kind of suggested that he had
been fired at point blank, but he didn't get to
rest right away. You would think that he would be
done at this point, but after taking that nest, Chips
(17:38):
helped his handler capture ten more prisoners later in the day,
so naturally he celebrated across America. Chips, however, he wasn't
the most gracious hero. When General Dwight Eisenhower actually tried
to congratulate him and give him a little pat Chip
bit him. Well, he is still a dog after all.
But that behavior didn't keep Chips from getting other honors.
(17:59):
He was awarded of the Silver Star for valor. He
got a Purple Heart for his wounds, which ended up
making him the most decorated dog hero of World War Two.
Unfortunately for Chips, or you know, maybe not so much.
He probably didn't mind getting all those medals are losing them,
but all of the media attention surrounding his awards attracted
(18:20):
the attention of the commander of the Order of the
Purple Heart, who felt that by honoring a dog, they
were really demeaning all of the men who had been
awarded a Purple Heart. He complained to President Roosevelt in
the War Department, and ultimately chips medals were taken away
and the dog was returned to his family. Like I said,
Chips probably didn't mind, but it is a little a
(18:41):
little sad. Yeah, I doubt he was too offended by it,
and he got to go back to Pleasantville, so I
didn't have to do that hang out with the general anymore.
There's actually I found when researching us. There's a nine,
I think, a Disney film that's called Chips the War Dog,
and I think it's based on the story. I'm interested
to know if anyone seen, and I certainly haven't. I
(19:01):
would have thought that I'd seen every dog movie. Well,
we were discussing motivational animal movies earlier today Homeward Bound,
and I'd like to see some movies made on these
war dogs stories. They're pretty interesting. Maybe not this last
one though, This last one's kind of a sad one
on the tear Jerker. So a lot of stories you
see about war dogs touch on the special bonds that
(19:21):
developed between the animals and the soldiers, particularly between dogs
and handlers. They work alongside each other, they sleep alongside
each other. Some handlers stayed with the same dog from
training to the battlefront, so it makes sense that they
would get close. But a great example of the spond
is the story of an eight five pound German shepherd
(19:42):
named Bruiser who served in Vietnam. So in September of
nineteen sixty nine, a young marine named John Flannely was
leading a twelve man patrol with Bruiser twelve miles south
of Don Long, and when Flannely and Bruiser stepped into
a clearing, suddenly, bruiser his ears perked up, and then,
as Flannely put it, quote, the whole clearing seemed to explode.
(20:06):
They were being fired on from all sides. Seemed everything
from grenades to mortar rockets hit the clearing, and the
sergeant yelled to move back, but it was too late.
Flannelly was hit. His chest was actually ripped open so
that he could see his own lung, and he tried
to shoot back, but he couldn't move. It seemed like
he was a goner. So at that point, thinking that
(20:29):
he's not going to survive, he tries to save his dog.
He told Bruiser to leave, to get out of there,
to get out of danger, but the dog stayed and
started kind of tugging at his shirt. So Flannely reaches
up and he grabs Bruiser's harness, and Bruiser is able
to drag him to a shell crater hole about three
hundred yards away to kind of protect him, and Bruiser
(20:51):
took two bullets in the process while he was doing this,
and Flannely was taken to the nearest mobile Army hospital
and later he was reunited with Bruiser. In an interview
with the Tampa Tribune in Flannely recalled this reunion. He
said a quote, he climbed on the bed talking about Bruiser,
put his head on my shoulder and licked my face.
(21:12):
I just held him and cried, what do you say
to someone who saved your life? So yeah, it's a
tear jerker. Flannely, whose life had been saved, did finally
make it home, but no one knows what ultimately happened
to Bruiser. And this is true for many of the
thousands of dogs that served in Vietnam. Although a lot
of the world where two military dogs were successfully returned
(21:36):
to civilian life, detrained essentially and adopted out, Vietnam war
dogs were considered equipment and in fact surplus equipment, even
if they were spoken for by handlers. So when the
US pulled out, the dogs were left behind. Some of
them were just left there and abandoned. Some were turned
over actually to the Vietnamese Army. Some were destroyed and
(21:58):
I think about a couple hundred I read were returned
to the US. So kind of a sad ending for
these dogs. But we don't want to end on a
sad note. No, we don't not not a notice that
as that. Um. Fortunately times have changed since the day's
US war dogs were just left behind a surplus equipment.
Since the average training costs, I mean, we can look
(22:19):
at this from a real rational perspective. First, the average
training costs of these war dogs is about twenty thou
dollars to forty tho dollars per dog. So while they're
in service, they're treated very well. You know, they get
the best care. They're provided with top equipment, bulletproof vests, doggles,
they're seriously called that. You should look up the picture
(22:39):
if you want to see dogs looking kind of cool
with some glass dogs. Yeah, and they do get serious
veterinary treatment, including I didn't know this psychological treatment if
the need occur, Yeah, doggy PTSD. I didn't even realize
that there was such a thing. But after several deployments,
most dogs get to retire at about eight or nine,
(23:01):
and then they're adopted out a bill that was passed
in two thousand allowed for this. After dogs are detrained,
of course, and many end up with their handlers after
that natural fit, you'd imagine they'd have the ultimate war
buddy sort of bond. But some dogs don't just go
into a life of pure retirement. They are, after all,
dogs like German shepherds, you know, ones that like to
(23:22):
have some sort of job or task that they do.
So some join a police force or work for a
security agency, and then some really just do kick back.
I read a quote from one former handler who was
adopting his dog, and he said, I'm gonna make life
so easy for him. He's going to be able to
do whatever he wants and finally relax a little bit.
(23:44):
And I think it's interesting that more and more people
are interested in adopting these war dogs now, these retired
war dogs. Going back to the recent news we were
talking about earlier, I think something like four d applications
were put in for adopting these dogs after the raid
on Osamavan on his compounds. Well, and I also came
across information about adopting dogs that weren't war dogs. They
(24:06):
weren't trained by the U. S. Military. They weren't retiring.
They were dogs, usually from Afghanistan or Iraq, that were
strays or abused, and it had been taken in by
soldiers there and kind of turned into like the mascot
dogs of today, cared for and ultimately, when the soldiers
were ready to redeploy or couldn't keep the pets that
(24:29):
that there were cats involved to couldn't keep the pets
at the base, there were some organizations that had come
into existence to taken those animals and help them with
any veterinary needs, hold them through quarantine, and eventually send
them to the US to live with the soldiers or
to join other adoptable families. A couple of them were
(24:49):
the Soldiers Animal Companions Fund and now Zad I'm not
sure if that's how that one is pronounced, but um,
I just was looking at the little pictures of the
animals soldiers had adopted, and it was also kind of heartwarming.
This has been a it's been a heart strings pulling episode,
hasn't it really has? Um? Well, maybe for some more
cool or uplifting photos we should post some of those
(25:12):
photo essays that you sent me earlier of war dogs. Yeah,
there are a couple great Rebecca Shaefer war dog galleries
that went viral on the internet a while back, and
they have amazing pictures dogs jumping out of planes, dogs
with these high tech doggles on as I mentioned earlier,
or just dogs looking like dogs cuddling with soldiers and
(25:34):
looking cute. But I mean, I really I've enjoyed this,
and I'd kind of like to hear from listeners about
other dog war dog suggestions he might have, because I
know we did stick mostly to World War One, World
War Two, a little bit of Vietnam, little tutor stuff
in there. Yeah, it was a very US focus, So
I especially love to know about any international war dogs
(25:55):
that we didn't learn about. I mean, we mainly focused
on ones that we could find information on it. If
there are others out there that you guys love, please
send them to us where History Podcast at how stuff
Works dot com, or you can look us up on
Facebook or on Twitter at MS industry And if you
want to learn a little bit more about war dogs
are old and war ducks today, how they're trained, all
of that, we do have an article on the website.
(26:18):
It's called how War Dogs Work, and you can search
for it by looking for war Dogs on our home
page at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House
(26:40):
Douff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today
on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chocolate Bardies, and today
Debilina and I are going to be talking about dogs,
but specifically war dogs. Yes, I mean dogs are one
(00:24):
of my favorite topics. Anyway, I am a your dog. Yes,
I'm the owner of an adorable wheat and terrier named Juley,
and I talked about him, probably way too much, but
that's not what inspired this podcast. Um. Actually, the news did, right, Sarah. Yeah,
war dogs have been in the news quite a bit lately,
as I'm sure many of you have realized. After Osama
(00:46):
bin Laden was killed and it was revealed that a
war dog, more appropriately a military working dog was present, Um,
it got people's attention. People wanted to know about these
militarily inclined dogs. It It's been on our minds really
for longer than that, because we have quite a bit
of Animal Planet content that we work on here at
(01:06):
how stuffworks dot com, and um, war dogs come up
from time to time, and those articles. Yeah, actually, one
that we're going to mention today came up last year
when we were editing some bully breed content, so that
will be something that you can read about later too, exactly.
And we even have an article on war dogs too,
which will throw to you at the end. But our
very own editor, Alison louder Milk, recommended it to her
(01:27):
to us and it was sort of the final push
to get us going on this topic. But we have
talked about dogs before, or rather Katie and Candice have
more like historical pooches of famous people, and Katie and
I have talked about war horses of history, so Napoleon's Marango,
Roberty Lee's traveler, Babiaka who is Il Sid's horse. But
(01:50):
in case you haven't listened to that episode, we really
didn't get much beyond the Civil War because horses, of course,
even though they were used for thousands of years in
battle all around the world, eventually became obsolete military technology.
That is not the case with dogs. No war dogs
and Sah mentioned they're now more properly called military working
(02:12):
dogs were used probably as far back as when humans
domesticated the gray wolf, and they're still used today. Since
there's still no better means of detecting an i e. D.
Than a dog's nose yea, even the most complex technology
can't compete. And there are a few qualities and you're
gonna see these pop up in the different dogs, the
different individual dogs we talk about. But a few qualities
(02:33):
that make dogs useful for warfare throughout history. One, their
strength and loyalty makes them really good fighters. Also, their
endurance makes them good messengers, and their intelligence and eagerness
to please make them trainable. Yeah, and then there's their
size too, and that's something which of course varies a
lot between breeds, and it makes them either really big
(02:55):
and intimidating and strong or tiny and able to go
where pep bull can't very easily go. So, starting sort
of in the early days with ancient warfare, ancient Persians, Syrians, Babylonians,
and Greeks all are known to have used dogs in war,
usually as shock troops. They'd have a line of mastiffs,
which if I was fighting and a lot of mastiffs
(03:19):
came charging at me, I would definitely stop and give
pause for a minute. It's probably massives that you think
of too, if you're considering ancient warfare. Ancient dogs in warfare. Yeah,
they're Egyptian monuments to that effect as far back as
three thousand BC that show massiff like dogs. These are
actually imported Masstiffs after seeing them fight with British soldiers
(03:39):
in fifty five BC, and he used them for things
like bull baiting, lion fighting, things like that, even fighting gladiator.
But if you're thinking about war dogs today or even
of the past century, you're probably not thinking of mastiffs.
You're probably thinking of two breeds in particular that are
now almost synonymous with military working dogs. These were both
developed around the turn of the twentieth century in Germany
(04:01):
and they've been used heavily in most of the centuries
major wars. And those are German Shepherds, which were bred
by Captain Max von Stephanits to be trainable, loyal, and intelligent.
The American Kennel Club describes them as or their characters
as incorruptible. Makes me imagine Elliott nests German shepherds or something.
The other one of those major breeds as the Doberman pincher,
(04:23):
which they were bred around the same time as we
mentioned in Germany, to have high endurance, speed and smarts.
And there are a few other large intelligent breeds that
pop up from time to time, the Belgian sheep dog
farm colleagues, giant Schnauzers, and a few notable MutS too
that we're going to mention. Uh, the U. S Military
now uses a lot of pure bred labs because they
(04:46):
are really good at sniffing things out and they have
that easy, friendly, calm demeanor. Well calm is probably not
the best word for labs, but easy going nice. But
we're not just going to talk about big dogs, because
little dogs certainly have their place in war history too, because,
as we said earlier, little dogs can go places where
(05:07):
people can't. Right. In World War One, little terriers were
actually used as cigarette dogs to distribute free tobacco to
troops and the trenches, and terrier breeds like Jack Russell's
would also patrol the trenches for rats, so they were
perfect for that because of their size and their prey drive,
their inclination too for those things well, and a little
less likely to get shell shocked than kitties. Kitties and
(05:29):
trenches doesn't sound like a good combination. So our first
dog we're going to talk about was actually a rater,
and we don't know that much about her except that
she did her job really, really well. And this dog
is now nicknamed Hatch. We don't know what her real
name was. World discuss the origins of that nickname in
a little bit. But she was a two year old
(05:49):
who lived aboard the tutor warship the mary Rose, which
we've talked about before on our shipwreck episode. The mary Rose,
as probably a lot of you remembers, thank in battle
July nineteen and most of the men on board went
down with the ship, as did little Hatch. However, the
(06:10):
mary Rose Trust recovered hatches skeleton and eventually reassembled it
and now is in the process of analyzing the skeleton
or the skeleton is being analyzed by experts to try
to figure out what kind of breed it is. Yeah,
And according to Rear Admiral John Lippiatt of the mary
Rose Trust, quote analysis of Hatch's bones suggests that she
(06:32):
spent most of her life within the confines of the ship.
It is likely that the longest walk she took were
along the keyside at Port Smith. So not a very
exciting life for poor little Hatch. But since she was
found wedged in the sliding door of the carpenter's cabin,
that's the nickname. Yeah, that's the nickname. Some have suggested
that she was the carpenter's pet or maybe a ship mascot,
(06:53):
so at least maybe she had an okay life on ship,
but evidence of only partial rats skeletons aboard the wreck
suggests that pet or not Hatch, was a rat or
a Sarah mentioned, and a pretty good one if you're
surprised that they had a dog as a rat, as
I kind of was. Cats apparently were considered bad luck
in Tutor times to have aboard your ship, although since
(07:16):
the mary Rose think anyway, I don't know if it
really would have helped or hurt much more. But now
we're gonna go ahead, fast forward, way past Tutor times
into the twentieth century, and that's where the rest of
our dogs lives are going to take place in their story. Yeah,
so we've talked about dogs used in ancient warfare and
a dog on the mary Rose, But when you fast
(07:38):
forward to the twineth century, as Sarah said, they're pretty
much it's pretty much not done dogs in warfare, at
least in the US. Even though state side kennel clubs
had lobbied for dogs in combat, there was no formal
war dog program during World War One, for example, but
there were still some mascot dogs here and there in
the trenches with US troops, and America's first Canaan war hero,
(08:00):
a bull terrier mix named Stubby, was one of them.
So Stubby got involved in the war effort during the
spring of nineteen seventeen, kind of by accident. He just
wandered onto the grounds of Yale where a training camp
for the hundred and second Infantry, twenty six Yankee Division
was taking place, and he seemed to be a few
weeks old, definitely astray, and he proved to be a
(08:22):
hit with the soldiers. They let him stay and supposedly
the dog was became one of them pretty quickly too.
He would drill with them, he learned to salute, and
Private J. Robert Conroy became Stubbies primary caretaker and they
named him Stubby because of his cropped tail, so a
little affectionate ribbing there with the dog. So when it
(08:43):
was time for the one second Infantry to ship out
to Europe, they smuggled Stubby aboard the s S Minnesota
by pulling him through a porthole with a rope. So
they went to Great Links to take their friend along
with them, and after they landed in France, Stubby stayed
with his unit, went to winter training with them, and
then joined the troops and the trenches. He participated in
seventeen engagements altogether in four World War One offensives, and
(09:07):
he never seemed to want to flee even with all
that shelling going on around him constantly. So there are
several stories about Stubby's war adventures, including how he got
gassed once and this made him more sensitive to the
smell of gas and better able to detect gas attacks,
so he would be able to detect them and then
sort of warn his fellow soldiers about it. But perhaps
(09:29):
the most famous story about him is one that involves
the capture of a German spy. Yeah, and there are
a few different versions slightly different versions of that story.
According to one, Stubby was sleeping in a trench one
night when he suddenly awoke and ran off into this
small patch of brush, and his caretaker, Conroy, heard a
(09:49):
voice cry out soon after and went to check and
see what was going on with it. He found Stubby
with his teeth sunk into the rear end of a
German spy who had been bi the making a map
of the Allied trenches. So the soldiers disarmed the spy. Stubby, however,
wasn't so willing to let go and finally had to
be Coke's pride, off of off of the guy. Yeah,
(10:12):
and you can see pictures of Stubby online if you
look him up, and he's not a very large dog.
So it's kind of funny to imagine this little dog
hanging off the back of someone's but basically it looked
like a dog who could who could bite in and
hold on them he does. Yeah, I mean that Animal
Planet content that we mentioned at the beginning of the
episode that we edited last year, and it was a
(10:33):
batch of content about bully breeds and that's where Stubby
came up in in our research with that. And one
thing that people kind of associate with bully breeds is
that they have a really strong bite. So then his blood. Yeah,
so I think you're probably right about that. But Stubby
received many honors for his heroics after the armistice. He
met President Woodrow Wilson when the President visited his regiment
(10:54):
in France on Christmas Day nineteen eighteen, and he returned
with his unit to the States in nineteen nineteen Stubby did.
That is, in nineteen one, General John J. Pershing awarded
him a gold medal, and later Stubby was designated an
honorary sergeant, So that's usually how you see his name
put out there. Meanwhile, though, back in the state, Stubby
was participating in veterans parades and went to American Legion conventions.
(11:17):
In nineteen nineteen twenty three, he became the official mascot
of Georgetown University because his still master Conroy, was attending
law school there. And by nineteen six Stubby died, but
he was not forgotten. He was stuffed, although that's not
exactly the best way of putting it. Instead, a plaster
(11:38):
cast was made of his body and his skin was
mounted over that cast, and his cremated remains were interred
within the cast. Kind of complicated, and for a while
he was on display at the National Red Cross Museum,
and then in nineteen fifty six, Conroy presented him to
the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and today he's
(11:59):
on display the National Guard Armory in Hartford, Connecticut, so
you can still go check out what Stubby looked like.
So Stubby made it into World War One sort of
by chance he had to hitch a ride, essentially. But
just because the US didn't officially use dogs in World
War One combat didn't mean that other countries didn't use
dogs a lot. So the Germans deployed approximately thirty thousand
(12:21):
dogs during the war, the French and the British another
twenty thousand dogs. And we're going to talk about a
few of those dogs, a few French dogs in our
next entry. Yeah, And French dogs are interesting because they
had a lot of different roles in war. They'd work
as sentries, ratters, and cigarette dogs. Some were Red Cross
casualty dogs or mercy dogs who would bring medical supplies
(12:43):
to troops injured on the field. PROUSTC, a French Red
Cross dog, for example, supposedly saved the lives of more
than a hundred men in a single day, dragging some
of them back to the trenches. But in World War One,
one of the most important responsibilities of war dogs was
actually message delivery. They could be trained to deliver messages
either one way, or to carry messages back and forth
(13:05):
with two handlers in different units. You normally think of
messengers in World War One as carrier pigeons, but Unlike
carrier pigeons, dogs obviously couldn't avoid the gas clouds by
just flying over them, so these messenger dogs were sometimes
outfitted with gas masks to protect them while they were
carrying these important notes between camps. But one of the
(13:28):
most famous messenger dogs from World War One was an
all black English Greyhound working Collie cross named Satan. And
Satan turns out to be a really good dog, so
terrible name. I guess she just got that name because
she might have been a little scary looking. But during
the Battle of Verdun, Satan's French handler and a small
(13:48):
garrison that was with him were cut off from the
rest of their troops and were under terribly heavy fire
behind enemy lines. They had run out of their pigeons
and they had nothing left to pass along the specifics
and their situation, like the coordinates of the German forces
that were selling them that needed to be silenced in
order to relieve the garrison. So it really seemed like
(14:11):
a hopeless situation. They were just going to get shelled
until they were all gone. Yeah. Finally, though, the men
saw a black dot racing towards them across the field,
and it turned out to be Satan in a gas
mask delivering a message from the French. But when he
was almost to safety, Satan was hit in the leg
by a German sniper and he laid down on the ground. Supposedly,
(14:34):
according to the Harper's Magazine article that the story was
originally told in, when Satan's handler saw the dog shot,
he got to the top of the trench to call
him himself, to try to urge him on, to try
to get him to keep going. A handler was shot dead,
but not until after Satan heard his voice and did
in fact get up and started on three legs, yeah,
(14:56):
and he arrived finally. His neck tube contained a message
that said, for God's sake, hold on, will send troops
to relieve you tomorrow. But more importantly than that message,
he had a basket with two it's always described as
two very frightened pigeons. I'm sure they were frightened, and
the French used these pigeons dashed off two identical messages
(15:21):
that had the coordinates of the Germans and sent the
birds off. One pigeon was killed, but the other safely
delivered the coordinates and thus saved the garrison. So it
was a joint effort of that pigeon and Satan but
managed to to help him out. So that was World
War One. But by the time World War Two rolled around,
the Army finally agreed that it needed to involve canines
(15:44):
and its efforts, so they started what was called the
Canine Core, and the first official canines were enlisted by
their owners. Owners actually donated more than forty dogs to
this cause, which is pretty amazing to think of just
signing your dog up to to go off to war,
but you don't know if he's going to come back
or not. I mean, in an environment where you're probably
sending your kids off to it wouldn't have been so strange. Exactly.
(16:08):
One of those dogs that was donated to the war
effort was Chips, a German Shepherd mix who was born
and basically just living a dog's life in Pleasantville, New
York when he was appropriate right whose owners enlisted him
in the Canine Core. But from Pleasantville, Chips went into
training and got sent to Morocco, and later he was
part of the security force that protected Roosevelt when Roosevelt
(16:32):
met with Churchill at Casablanca. But Chips probably best known
for the work he did in July nine with General
George Patton's seventh Army as they came ashore in Sicily.
So the morning of July tenth, Chips and his handler
were pushing inland into Sicily from the beach and they
approached this hut, or at least that's what it looked like,
(16:54):
that was up on a hillside. Suddenly, though, the hut
erupted with machine gun fire. It is really a disguised pillbox.
All the human soldiers at this point hit the ground,
but Chips broke free and he stormed the hut from
the rear. Moments later, several Italian soldiers spilled out, with
Chips kind of going at them. He was supposedly tearing
(17:14):
at the arms and the throat of one of them,
and chips handler called him off, but the American side
took the prisoners, but Chips didn't come through this unharmed himself.
He had a small scalp wound and powder burns on
his coat, to which kind of suggested that he had
been fired at point blank, but he didn't get to
rest right away. You would think that he would be
done at this point, but after taking that nest, Chips
(17:38):
helped his handler capture ten more prisoners later in the day,
so naturally he celebrated across America. Chips, however, he wasn't
the most gracious hero. When General Dwight Eisenhower actually tried
to congratulate him and give him a little pat Chip
bit him. Well, he is still a dog after all.
But that behavior didn't keep Chips from getting other honors.
(17:59):
He was awarded of the Silver Star for valor. He
got a Purple Heart for his wounds, which ended up
making him the most decorated dog hero of World War Two.
Unfortunately for Chips, or you know, maybe not so much.
He probably didn't mind getting all those medals are losing them,
but all of the media attention surrounding his awards attracted
(18:20):
the attention of the commander of the Order of the
Purple Heart, who felt that by honoring a dog, they
were really demeaning all of the men who had been
awarded a Purple Heart. He complained to President Roosevelt in
the War Department, and ultimately chips medals were taken away
and the dog was returned to his family. Like I said,
Chips probably didn't mind, but it is a little a
(18:41):
little sad. Yeah, I doubt he was too offended by it,
and he got to go back to Pleasantville, so I
didn't have to do that hang out with the general anymore.
There's actually I found when researching us. There's a nine,
I think, a Disney film that's called Chips the War Dog,
and I think it's based on the story. I'm interested
to know if anyone seen, and I certainly haven't. I
(19:01):
would have thought that I'd seen every dog movie. Well,
we were discussing motivational animal movies earlier today Homeward Bound,
and I'd like to see some movies made on these
war dogs stories. They're pretty interesting. Maybe not this last
one though, This last one's kind of a sad one
on the tear Jerker. So a lot of stories you
see about war dogs touch on the special bonds that
(19:21):
developed between the animals and the soldiers, particularly between dogs
and handlers. They work alongside each other, they sleep alongside
each other. Some handlers stayed with the same dog from
training to the battlefront, so it makes sense that they
would get close. But a great example of the spond
is the story of an eight five pound German shepherd
(19:42):
named Bruiser who served in Vietnam. So in September of
nineteen sixty nine, a young marine named John Flannely was
leading a twelve man patrol with Bruiser twelve miles south
of Don Long, and when Flannely and Bruiser stepped into
a clearing, suddenly, bruiser his ears perked up, and then,
as Flannely put it, quote, the whole clearing seemed to explode.
(20:06):
They were being fired on from all sides. Seemed everything
from grenades to mortar rockets hit the clearing, and the
sergeant yelled to move back, but it was too late.
Flannelly was hit. His chest was actually ripped open so
that he could see his own lung, and he tried
to shoot back, but he couldn't move. It seemed like
he was a goner. So at that point, thinking that
(20:29):
he's not going to survive, he tries to save his dog.
He told Bruiser to leave, to get out of there,
to get out of danger, but the dog stayed and
started kind of tugging at his shirt. So Flannely reaches
up and he grabs Bruiser's harness, and Bruiser is able
to drag him to a shell crater hole about three
hundred yards away to kind of protect him, and Bruiser
(20:51):
took two bullets in the process while he was doing this,
and Flannely was taken to the nearest mobile Army hospital
and later he was reunited with Bruiser. In an interview
with the Tampa Tribune in Flannely recalled this reunion. He
said a quote, he climbed on the bed talking about Bruiser,
put his head on my shoulder and licked my face.
(21:12):
I just held him and cried, what do you say
to someone who saved your life? So yeah, it's a
tear jerker. Flannely, whose life had been saved, did finally
make it home, but no one knows what ultimately happened
to Bruiser. And this is true for many of the
thousands of dogs that served in Vietnam. Although a lot
of the world where two military dogs were successfully returned
(21:36):
to civilian life, detrained essentially and adopted out, Vietnam war
dogs were considered equipment and in fact surplus equipment, even
if they were spoken for by handlers. So when the
US pulled out, the dogs were left behind. Some of
them were just left there and abandoned. Some were turned
over actually to the Vietnamese Army. Some were destroyed and
(21:58):
I think about a couple hundred I read were returned
to the US. So kind of a sad ending for
these dogs. But we don't want to end on a
sad note. No, we don't not not a notice that
as that. Um. Fortunately times have changed since the day's
US war dogs were just left behind a surplus equipment.
Since the average training costs, I mean, we can look
(22:19):
at this from a real rational perspective. First, the average
training costs of these war dogs is about twenty thou
dollars to forty tho dollars per dog. So while they're
in service, they're treated very well. You know, they get
the best care. They're provided with top equipment, bulletproof vests, doggles,
they're seriously called that. You should look up the picture
(22:39):
if you want to see dogs looking kind of cool
with some glass dogs. Yeah, and they do get serious
veterinary treatment, including I didn't know this psychological treatment if
the need occur, Yeah, doggy PTSD. I didn't even realize
that there was such a thing. But after several deployments,
most dogs get to retire at about eight or nine,
(23:01):
and then they're adopted out a bill that was passed
in two thousand allowed for this. After dogs are detrained,
of course, and many end up with their handlers after
that natural fit, you'd imagine they'd have the ultimate war
buddy sort of bond. But some dogs don't just go
into a life of pure retirement. They are, after all,
dogs like German shepherds, you know, ones that like to
(23:22):
have some sort of job or task that they do.
So some join a police force or work for a
security agency, and then some really just do kick back.
I read a quote from one former handler who was
adopting his dog, and he said, I'm gonna make life
so easy for him. He's going to be able to
do whatever he wants and finally relax a little bit.
(23:44):
And I think it's interesting that more and more people
are interested in adopting these war dogs now, these retired
war dogs. Going back to the recent news we were
talking about earlier, I think something like four d applications
were put in for adopting these dogs after the raid
on Osamavan on his compounds. Well, and I also came
across information about adopting dogs that weren't war dogs. They
(24:06):
weren't trained by the U. S. Military. They weren't retiring.
They were dogs, usually from Afghanistan or Iraq, that were
strays or abused, and it had been taken in by
soldiers there and kind of turned into like the mascot
dogs of today, cared for and ultimately, when the soldiers
were ready to redeploy or couldn't keep the pets that
(24:29):
that there were cats involved to couldn't keep the pets
at the base, there were some organizations that had come
into existence to taken those animals and help them with
any veterinary needs, hold them through quarantine, and eventually send
them to the US to live with the soldiers or
to join other adoptable families. A couple of them were
(24:49):
the Soldiers Animal Companions Fund and now Zad I'm not
sure if that's how that one is pronounced, but um,
I just was looking at the little pictures of the
animals soldiers had adopted, and it was also kind of heartwarming.
This has been a it's been a heart strings pulling episode,
hasn't it really has? Um? Well, maybe for some more
cool or uplifting photos we should post some of those
(25:12):
photo essays that you sent me earlier of war dogs. Yeah,
there are a couple great Rebecca Shaefer war dog galleries
that went viral on the internet a while back, and
they have amazing pictures dogs jumping out of planes, dogs
with these high tech doggles on as I mentioned earlier,
or just dogs looking like dogs cuddling with soldiers and
(25:34):
looking cute. But I mean, I really I've enjoyed this,
and I'd kind of like to hear from listeners about
other dog war dog suggestions he might have, because I
know we did stick mostly to World War One, World
War Two, a little bit of Vietnam, little tutor stuff
in there. Yeah, it was a very US focus, So
I especially love to know about any international war dogs
(25:55):
that we didn't learn about. I mean, we mainly focused
on ones that we could find information on it. If
there are others out there that you guys love, please
send them to us where History Podcast at how stuff
Works dot com, or you can look us up on
Facebook or on Twitter at MS industry And if you
want to learn a little bit more about war dogs
are old and war ducks today, how they're trained, all
of that, we do have an article on the website.
(26:18):
It's called how War Dogs Work, and you can search
for it by looking for war Dogs on our home
page at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House
(26:40):
Douff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today
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